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That snapped the last thread of restraint. My voice turned lethal. “Don’t challenge me.”

“Why?” she fired back. “Because you’ll bite me again? Because you’ll lock me in a room? Because you’ll have men drag me back if I run?”

I stepped into her space. She refused to move. “You want the truth?” I asked, each word shaking with contained violence.

“Yes.” Her breath caught.

“Yes,” I repeated, louder. “Because I will do all of it, because I will not lose you, because you don’t get to leave and pretend you can go back to spreadsheets and quiet mornings like I didn’t just mark you.”

Her eyes flashed with tears she refused to let fall. “You don’t own me.”

“I do,” I snarled. “And I hate that you’re making me say it like this. I hate that you’re fighting me when all I’m trying to do is…”

“Control me?”

“No,” I roared. “Protect you!”

She didn’t cower. She glared, and that was what made it worse.

“That’s the same thing to you,” she spat. “You don’t know the difference!” Her words struck deep because…She wasn’t wrong, not entirely.

Protection had always been control in my world. Safety meant obedience. Survival meant dominance. That was how we stayed alive, but Bryn wasn’t part of my world. Not yet, and she was tearing into me like she meant to remake it.

Her voice dropped, shaking with fury and something raw underneath. “How is this supposed to work, Viking?” My jaw clenched at her question.

She stepped forward, eyes burning. “You’re not staying here, you’ll leave the UK. You’ll go back to wherever you came from. And I live here, I don’t even know your real name!”

“You know enough.”

“I know NOTHING!” she snapped. “So, what is your plan? Do you expect me to just… follow you around like a hostage? Like your little vampire girlfriend?”

I bared my teeth. “Mate.”

“I don’t care what word you use!” she yelled. “What do you expect from me?”

The question hung between us, heavy and brutal, and the answer inside me was simple. Everything. I expected her to come with me, I expected her to bend, I expected the bond to override her fear, but Bryn was fire, and fire didn’t bend.

So, all that came out of me was the ugliest part of the truth. “I expect you to stay,” I said.

Her laugh broke, bitter. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one that matters.”

She shook her head, breathing hard. “I hate you.”

I flinched, not outwardly. Not where she could see, but something inside me went razor sharp.

“You don’t,” I said, voice low. “You’re just scared.”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t tell me what I feel.”

I stepped back like I needed space, like the room was closing in. I needed to leave before I did something worse than shout. Before my temper destroyed what little trust I’d managed to build in her. Before I proved to her that she was right to be terrified of me, and the more she fought, the more something in me cracked because I didn’t want to force her, I wanted her to want it. To understand, to choose me willingly. But my instincts didn’t care about romance. They cared about possession, protection and survival.

And Bryn standing there, telling me she’d leave in the morning, felt like someone holding a knife to my throat.

“Enough,” I snapped.

“I’m not finished,” she shot back.